


Green & Silver

by eucleia



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: pevolo, undercurrents of darkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28267137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eucleia/pseuds/eucleia
Summary: She catches Tom’s eye then. Prefect and perfect, he does not care to know anyone; they seek him out, falling over themselves for his favour. Not her, though. Head down, eyes focused, she has never once approached him. And now, it’s not her, or her lingering frown, or her eyes that draw his attention; it’s the defiant tilt of her chin and the textbook for Third Year Potions that she's clutching so hard her knuckles show up white.
Relationships: Susan Pevensie/Tom Riddle
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Green & Silver

When they first return from Narnia, it's like nothing has changed.

And really, nothing has, for the most part. The war is still going on. They're still children, evacuated to the countryside, away from harm. It does not matter that they were Kings and Queens, that they commanded armies and ruled people; they are children, and as synonymous to powerless as they can get.

It's difficult to adjust. They have grown up too much in the years, and sometimes, it is hard to remember how to be a child again. It is a relief, then, when they are called back home. It is a relief, when their mother tells them that she has received a most curious letter about a most curious visitor that Saturday.

And so it is eight months later, and they're back at home and sitting all in a row on their living room sofa as a stern-looking woman tells their mother about Hogwarts, the school of Wizardry and Magic. Susan would have laughed, really – and Lucy did, though it was more a happy laugh than an incredulous one – had the woman not looked so very serious.

"This is unprecedented, of course. The late admission, and four muggle-borns, at that. We have every magical child written down the _moment_ they are born, I assure you, the system has no flaws." She pauses for a moment to peer at them over her sharp, square glasses, as if considering the four very real, very present proofs of the opposite in front of her. Then she continued, “Mister Edmund shall be quite at home with the first years, but I'm afraid, Miss Susan, and Mister Peter, that you will have to start in the same year as well.”

"First years?" Susan had cut in sharply. "You don't mean—"

"Yes, I'm afraid I do," the woman had said. Professor McGonagall, that's what she had called herself, Susan remembered. "It's only a year, in your case. You won't be too far removed from your peers—"

"But we'll be behind?" Susan had asked.

"Yes," McGonagall had said, and that had been that.

Lucy was too young to go with them that year, and so when September 1st had rolled around, it had been Peter, Susan, and Edmund who had bid their mum farewell and stepped onto the train into an unknown world that had hitherto remained hidden to them.

But they were excited. As excited as they could be, struggling to keep up with the changes, of the knowledge that while they had been travelling to another world, yet another had lain under their nose the whole time. And still, beneath it all, they were adult-ish children, or child-ish adults.

It wasn't until their journey on the train that they heard about the Sorting, and even then, they had not the time to think about it before they were ushered into the Great Hall, and the Sorting Hat set before them.

Edmund was sorted first.

"Hufflepuff!" the hat had shouted after a moment's consideration.

Peter had gone next, and the hat had barely touched his head before it had roared out, "GRYFFINDOR!"  
Amidst the cheers and the pointing fingers, Susan had put the hat on with trembling fingers, the last to go. _Ravenclaw_ , she thought. "Slytherin!" the hat called out.

And there it was.

She went and sat on the table next to Edmund's, farthest from Peter's, clustered amongst the eleven-year-olds with whom she felt no affiliation. A few people from the table tried to congratulate her, but she smiled politely and turned away.

Peter had caught her hand after the feast had ended, right before they had all gone their separate ways to separate dormitories. He had read the hurt and sadness in her face.

"It'll be okay, Su," he said as his prefect shouted behind him to _GET IN LINE, PEVENSIE_. "We'll have classes together, and meals. _It'll be okay_."

Somehow, she didn't believe him.

It was humiliating, Susan thought, as she went from one class to another, sharing the room with 11-year-olds and her brothers. Peter tried to be encouraging—they had two classes together, Potions and Charms, and every time, Peter would wait for her outside the door and choose a spot next to hers and chatter all the way through class. She could tell he was trying to make her feel better, but it did not work.

Peter thrived with new friends and the promise of more. Susan curled up into herself, cold and friendless, determined to change her fate despite those who thought she did not need to.

She took extra classes. She begged the professors to allow her to write the exams she needed, and to let her work her way to where she was supposed to be, where she _should_ have been.

When September rolls around again, Lucy has just started at Hogwarts. Peter and Edmund are Second Years.

Susan is a Third.

She catches Tom’s eye then. Prefect and perfect, he does not care to know anyone; they seek him out, falling over themselves for his favour. Not her, though. Head down, eyes focused, she has never once approached him. And now, it’s not her, or her lingering frown, or her eyes that draw his attention; it’s the defiant tilt of her chin and the textbook for Third Year Potions that she's clutching so hard her knuckles show up white.

"She skipped a year," the whispers say, following behind her as she goes to class. "Took extra classes during her First Year and wrote double the exams."

It's her ambition that shines out to him.

Susan Pevensie, the miracle witch whose name, along with her siblings', hadn't existed in the Hogwarts waiting list till last year. Susan Pevensie, the only one of her siblings to end up in Slytherin, separated from them not only by a House, but by a whole year, now. She, Peter, and Edmund had started together; now, she left them behind, and did not look back.

Sometimes, he feels her eyes on him. He's not surprised; he's handsome, smart, and popular. All the professors like him. All the Slytherins like him, too, and quite a few Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Gryffindors, house loyalty be damned.

What surprises him is when he starts watching her back.

One morning, he notices her leave the Great Hall early, eating barely anything for breakfast. Another day, he catches her working on an essay in the common room, chewing on the back of her quill before startling and smoothing the vane back into place. He watches her, and he realises she always sits alone.

He watches her, and he realises he hasn't once, not once, seen her smile.

He waits. Christmas passes, spring arrives, classes end. That summer, he wonders what she's doing. He wonders if her siblings notice her sadness. He wonders what she learns, outside the embrace of Hogwarts, in a world that is both cruel and cold.

On September 1, he watches her slip into a separate compartment than her brothers and sister. They call to her, but don't protest when she leaves.

He introduces himself to her the week after classes begin. Potions has ended, but he does not need an excuse to stay behind; Slughorn never reprimands him. He would have Tom stay for the next class, too, if he cared to, but Tom has no reason to. Tom knows the Fourth Years are next, and so he dawdles just long enough for them to pile in, Susan leading them into the hall. He thinks – _hopes_ – he sees her stop, pause at the sight of him, but then she looks away and places her books beside his cauldron. Coincidence, except not really, because he knows where she sits.

"Susan, right?" he says, smiling, and her flurry of movements, busy setting up the cauldron, halt.

"Yes," she says, almost stiffly. _Look at me_ , he says silently, and feels a curl of pleasure when she heeds his unbidden thought. She's paler up close, her lips fuller and her brows more furrowed, and he's lost in unwrapping those bits of information when she speaks again. "Tom," she says. "May I help you?"

Tom doesn't miss a beat when he replies. "Slughorn's holding a party this weekend. Come with me."

She stares at him, eyes wide, and for a moment he thinks she'll say no – say no to _him_ , and there's a lick of anger in his belly but it quells as she blinks and nods.

"Sure."

News spreads quickly. By Monday, everyone knows that Tom has taken a girl to Slughorn's party, and not just any girl, no, it's _Susan Pevensie_ , the witch wonder. Tom loves the attention. He smiles away the questions and holds her hand tighter in his, and when Peter catches Susan's eye, Tom pulls her away into an empty classroom. She doesn't resist; she wants to be distracted by him.

He knows she's fighting with her siblings when he finds her in the common room a few weeks later, eyes red but chin as defiant as that first day of school last year, and he pulls her close.

"They don't understand you," he says, and his fingers dig into her back as she agrees.

"Stories and nonsense," she mumbles into his neck, and Tom knows there is more to her than he ever imagined. The thought makes his lips curl.

She stays with him at Hogwarts for Christmas break, and they spend whole evenings in the common room. He tells her about the studying he does on his own, the old and dark spells he has found deep in the library, and she tells him about the kind of magic that's not in books, of other worlds and talking animals. He is not sure if she believes her own stories or not, but he's enraptured by the way she speaks, eyes gazing into the fire and her fingers playing absent-mindedly with his hair. When she gets up from the chair, he pulls on her hand and tells her she speaks like a Queen. She laughs at that, laughs for the first time since he has known her, loud and clear, eyes bright.

"I _am_ a Queen," she says, and he's never seen her like this, a fire in her eyes and a perpetual smile on her lips. He closes his fingers around her other hand and watches as the smile falls off her face at the look in his eyes. It's hunger, it's ambition, it's something he's not willing to name. All he knows is that he needs her by his side. Slowly, he sees the emotion creep into her own gaze as he speaks.

"I will make you _my_ Queen," he says, softly, quietly, with certainty.

She does not reply.

Peter is not happy when he returns to Hogwarts. There's a change in Susan now, and everyone sees it in the way she carries herself. She's proud, and no longer defiant of her place in the castle. She belongs at Hogwarts. Hogwarts belongs to her.

Lucy tries talking to her to no avail, and Edmund writes her letters that she reads and then crumples and throws into the fire. Where before the siblings had been estranged, now Susan turns away from them, forsaking their words. _It's too late_ , she tells Tom, when he asks her about it, and he doesn't press the subject. The world had turned against him. What better person for him, than the girl who turned her back on the world?

Tom tells her about his plans for the world on a lazy March afternoon, and Susan expects herself to be afraid, but all she finds is satisfaction. She's been reading more and more on her own, the whole Hogwarts library not enough to contain her fire. She understands now what Tom wants from her, and knows what she needs from him. When he looks at her again, touches her face and calls her his Queen, she smiles. She reaches out, and touches his face right back, tracing the line of his jaw and pushing the black hair out of his hungry, hungry eyes. She watches the way his eyes follow her every move, and she whispers back to him.

_My Prince._

**Author's Note:**

> I was introduced to this pairing a few years ago on tumblr, and I've been enamoured ever since. They just make so much sense? They make SO much sense.
> 
> Also, there was always more to Susan than lipsticks and nylons.


End file.
